Greenham Common free festivals 1981-82

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Greenham Common Peace Camp

The Free Festivals

and the saga of the

Peace Convoy.

1981-1982. Part 2.

Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe Bus at Greenham 82

Greenham Common 1982 © Janet Thomson

Confrontation and consternation .
Outside the base ,with the buses , vans and campers and microbuses ,station wagons and cars of the peace Convoy filling the highway as far as the eye could see in both directions , a token force of a few officers and two wagons stood at the head of the main driveway to the site - a few feet in front of a deep trench dug across the drive by relays of determined lawmen working all night long.
What they weren't prepared for was the sheer mass of the convoy filling the highway in both directions - making it impossible for the cops to move around . Eventually one group from the convoy entered via a back entrance unknown to the police whilst the rest swelled around the police and their paddy wagons , pushing them gently to one side. Crowd rearranges rocks and dirt , outnumbered bobbies retreat for fight another day and the site is occupied.

Inside the base a meeting of top brass broke up in consternation . Aides ran about frantically, telephones started ringing in London , Washington , Moscow ( Soviet TV flew in a whole crew who went round filming the event ).
Greenham free press , a mimeographed free sheet produced on site asked.

' If not us , who ? , if not now , when ? , if not here , why ?
We have come here not so much to protest at our lack of freedom , but to celebrate the freedom which is actually there for everyone who is prepared to reach out and grab it - to celebrate our freedom by living it .

The unstoppable convoy has taken another site , but not just another site. The most important site we have ever taken . The place where the crazy unstoppable rush to nuclear annihilation can be stopped or not - where they must be stopped if the planet is to have any future at all.

Its what we have been practising for all these long years, Every Deeply Vale , every Inglestone, every Windsor free festival , every Stonehenge has in a way been a preparation for this -this is the one that really matters, Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher want to put 96 cruise missiles here to blow up the world with and its now or never to prove Nostradamus wrong if we can '

Attila the stockbroker at Greenham 81 © Big Steve

The cruise missiles are due in 83, Construction work has already started . And just ten miles up the narrow country lanes is the Aldermaston Weapons research Establishment - in the sixties , the focus of the massive CND ( Ca,mpaign for Nuclear disarmament , ban the bomb movement - still at work , developing and producing atomic and more recently chemical and biological weapons . Since the 60s Aldermaston has collected around it large quantities of extremely toxic nuclear wastes which are so dangerous over such long periods of time ( 25, 000 years ) that no one has been able to find a way of disposing of them .

Its had a bad accident record . By international agreement only a certain quota of waste can be dumped in the sea every year., Aldermaston alone produces more than the British quota for sea dumping , so they stockpile the rest. So far 13 Aldermaston workers are on record as suffering from plutonium contamination and four have died of cancer. They have got away with all of this for years despite CND, exposes by the Liberal press, despite every form of protest and just weeks before Greenham occupation news leaked out of a billion dollar plus expansion of Aldermaston, to design and develop the nest generation of nuclear weapons after Trident . They are already preparing the production of nuclear weapons for the 90s.

Greenham Common 1982- doing PR for Blue Moon Festival © Janet Thomson

Big Steve,who was present at Stonehenge, puts the festival and convoy into context

photo © Convoy Steve.

greenham 82 was an incredible experience.
I was at the main stage (at Stonehenge ) doing the PR MC bit when someone asked me if I could drive their bus for them to Greenham -can´t remember why but I did and followed the long line of trucks buses leaving the site. We arrived at the base and followed the back route beside the fence to the site. Nearly getting stuck in a gully once or twice. Once there we got together the stage in the Tibetans tent though we erected the pyramid.
My biggest problem was persons unknown cutting the cables to the generator on various occasions hence the sudden power cuts and not the idiot stage crew forgetting to fill the genny with fuel leading to bleeding the genny to get us up and running again. I do remember walking around site with Rat Scabies of the Damned impressing a few of the convoy surprised to see a pop star on site at Greenham. Also of note band wise I brought Dreamcycle Seven to play as well as Solstice and convoy band Red Ice and of course the amazing Tibetan Wystic Mankers.

The sweat lodge on site was amazing and we bathed naked in the little stream beside the base much to the amusement of American servicemen passing in their jeeps. I remember wandering into rainbow Paul and Annie Tibet very early one morning to join them in an improvised jam in front of a large section of the perimeter fence that had been pulled down in a direct action protest. The security guard was pretty freaked as Paul sang his twisted freedom peace song.

Later that morning the police arrived in large numbers in riot gear and everyone sat in a huge circle in front of the pyramid as the police seemed to pick out indiscriminately various members of the convoy. Out of a beautiful double decker bus the sounds of " Theme from a Teenage Opera" could be heard,
' Grocer Jack Grocer Jack is it true what Mummy said you won´t come back 82 brings many fears '...............
Uncanny (see newsletter 7 for 12 year old Justines view) At least we got rid of the cruise missiles and felt the blessings of the peace bringers and some funny universal sanity.
big Steve

Convoy Steve also adds his two happence worth

"Reading those newsletters brings back plenty of memories

like the time that Arthur Wally went for a shit one morning at the communal shit pit. Unbeknownst to him, the night before, someone had knocked over a deer on the road (accidentally) and retrieved the carcass to take back to site for eating. Now , common myth had it that certain internal organs of wild deer are not safe to eat so this amateur butcher removed said guts and flung them in the shit pit. Enter Arthur Wally the next morn who eased his rear end carefully over the trench and sat a while deliberating on life ,the universe and had a damn good stomach turning , gut wrenching, -"oh my god I wish that I hadn't eaten from the Free Food Kitchen again" crap. Upon finishing he wiped his arse and stood up, pulled up his pants and turned to admire (as you do) his recent handiwork. His scream was heard all over the camp as he saw the eviscerated deer guts taking them to be his own recently removed bowels !!.
Its all true !!